Immigrant Status and Victimization: Associations across Race/ethnicity and Neighborhood Contexts

• In Event: Examining Adverse Experiences of First and Second Generation Immigrants: School- and Community-based Samples

Abstract

The association between immigration and crime has been at the forefront of political and policy debate in recent years. Given the rapid growth of Asian and Hispanic immigrants, and the marginalized socioeconomic position many in these subgroups face, there is an urgent need for a systemic understanding of the victimization experiences faced across different generations of Asian and Hispanic immigrant subgroups. This study fills the gap in the literature to date through (1) investigating variation in the victimization of violent and property crime among immigrants of different statuses (e.g., authorized immigrants, unauthorized immigrants, and immigrant generations); (2) examining how the variation is compounded by race/ethnicity (e.g., Hispanics and Asians); and (3) identifying community-level characteristics that contribute to the variation in victimization experiences. This study uses a representative cross-sectional survey of residents’ victimization experiences in the city of San Jose, CA. We used a stratified multistage sampling method to select our sample from 80 primary sample clusters. Several important implications of the methods and findings will be discussed and suggestions for future research offered.

Authors

• Wilson Yuan, San Jose State University

• Chris Melde, Michigan State University

• Xin Jiang, Tulane University